On Monday, January 11, 2016 at 6:53:06 AM UTC-10, cibola de oro wrote:
> dsi1 wrote:
>
> > http://www.lacemusic.com/alumitone_single_coil.php
> >
> Forgot to include my comments on these:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFHE9sL1IfU
>
> Very clean but a definite jangley sound.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsHeBClnTls
>
> Just super bright and even a tad trashy?
>
> A fascinating pickup.
>
> I wouldn't do an entire axe, but I can see using one as a go to for
> certain songs.

It didn't suit my archtop because an archtop guitar should have a particular sound to them. As it goes, I don't want a wide range of tones on an archtop. It's actually a bit of a muddy, dark, sound.

The Alumitones are the most radical design in magnetic electric guitar pickup in the history of magnetic electric guitar pickups. Theoretically, they are the holy grail of magnetic pickups - low impedance, high output.

They do this by inducing current flow through a chunk of aluminum instead of coils of wire. They then use a small coil of wire as a secondary transformer winding for the output. This results in a very quiet, extended frequency range, pickup that is not going to get microphonic with age as pickups coils of wires can.

As it goes, most guitarists prefer their guitars to have pickups designed 50 - 60 years ago and the Alumitones are holy grails that was kind of a bomb in the marketplace. My guess is that it's going to take a little while longer before guitarists move into the modern age.